leah's Blog

Entry for May 18, 2007
May 18, 2007 | 9:52 PM PST
Tags: greenhouse , pergola , moratorium , bamboo windchimes , beans , peas , birds , lilacs , rugosa rose , iris , groundcover , marigold , petunia , pansy , rainy weather , pussy willow

<growl>  I just wrote a whole entry and then when I went to post it the auto time out had logged me out.  What an annoyingly short time period.

There's no way I'm going to remember to update this thing every day, that's becoming clear.

It's been rainy, cooler, and windy this week, so I'm not getting much done out in the yard.  Which is actually just what I needed, because while we were spending all our time outside, the *inside* has been going to pot!  We're having a dozen people over on Sunday afternoon, and I'd've been ashamed to have company with the state of our house earlier this week.  It's looking better now.  :)

I did get some stuff done--I got some of my ornamental pots planted.  The smaller urn already had purple pansies in it, but the dogs have knocked it over half a dozen times, so it needed to be topped off.  And moved!  I did the larger urn in marigolds, purple petunias, and ivy.  And a hanging basket in ivy, nestled in the pussy willow.  I did two window boxes off the side of the back porch, both in marigolds and a silver vining groundcover I forget the name of.  I still have some annuals and ivy left, and a dozen or so ornamental pots.  I just need some potting soil.

My beans and peas are sprouting, I'll put them out in the bed early next week once they're big enough to not be so tempting to the birds.  The irises are blooming.  The lilacs are done for the year.  The rugosa roses are going strong, and they smell heavenly, even from 15 feet away.

With the wind, I couldn't help but put out the bamboo windchimes I hadn't hung yet.  They're scattered around the yard, and I love the sound of them.  The new one I just bought dropped a chime already, and needs to be repaired.  I don't understand why they don't build them more durably; it didn't even last 24 hours.

I moved all my unplanted plants over out of the way, since they were accumulating and looking pretty cluttered.  They nearly cover a 4x4 ft piece of plywood.  I am now instituting a moratorium on purchasing plants until they are all in the ground.  Or pots.  ;)  I managed to resist temptation when I walked through the Walmart nursery this afternoon.  I may make an exception for perennials on clearance at Lowe's.

Started looking into permits for the greenhouse and the pergola. 

Entry for May 12, 2007
May 14, 2007 | 10:40 PM PST
Tags: mr k , peppers , blueberry , azalea , primrose , sedum , corsican mint , horseradish , chives , variegated peppermint , bamboo windchimes , zen garden

So Mr K got home on Saturday and off we went to Peppers.  I *love* that place.  They don't accept plastic, and every time we go we end up spending every last dime we have on us, and sometimes we have to go to the grocery store a few miles down the road and get more.

This time we came home with 2 blueberry bushes (a Mother's Day gift for my mother), 2 magenta colored azaleas, 2 evening primroses, a black pine, 3 pots of Dragon's Blood sedum, a dozen pots of Corsican Mint, a pot of horseradish, two pots of chives, [to be edited when I get home and can look at the pile].  Oh, and a huge set of bamboo wind chimes.  I have a weakness for bamboo wind chimes.

He set to work planting things as soon as we got home, while I ran back out to Lowe's to fetch him some more cedar mulch.  I picked up 3 more trowels, too, since it seems like I'm always looking for one.

The black pine went in over where the Zen garden will be.  They're such slow growers, we figured we may as well go ahead and get it in now, with a nice healthy dose of compost, and get it growing.  His mother used to have two of them out in her front yard, but she didn't like the way they looked and chopped them down.  I haven't been over to see what else he put in over there, but when I dropped off the mulch, he had about a 6' diameter vaguely circle-ish area cleared of sod.

It's too bad he got home so late, we ran out of light not too long after we got home.

First mosquito bite of the season tonight.